There are a few more formalities to get out of the way (like actually receiving their parties' nominations at this summer's conventions), but it appears clear that, barring a political miracle of some sort, the Democratic and Republican nominees will be Barack Obama and John McCain.While a certain part of me will miss having the chance to vote for the first female president -- who knows when the next opportunity will arrive -- the evidence (and the polls) shows that Obama is the strongest opponent for Senator McCain.

Senator Obama is not only the strongest candidate for the Democrats, he also offers a stark and compelling contrast to McCain that wouldn't exist if Hillary Clinton were the nominee. Indeed, the Obama-McCain election will offer voters the clearest choice they've had since at least John F. Kennedy's election in 1960 to change the direction America is headed.

Senator McCain will be a formidable foe for Barack and the Democrats. He has a reputation -- unjustly deserved, I would suggest -- as a maverick and moderate that Independents are attracted to. He'll be strong in many of the swing states like Ohio and even in mostly Democrat-leaning Pennsylvania, where Independent and so-called Reagan Democrats abound.

But even with his compelling personal life story and his attractiveness to certain Independents, McCain will lose the presidential election this November. He will lose, and he and the Republicans should lose, because the American people, after eight years of Bush's devastating economic and foreign policy failures, have decided that America is headed in the wrong direction. Of the two remaining credible presidential candidates, only Barack Obama offers a vision of change for America. As many have remarked, Obama's vision also includes hopefulness about the future the country so desperately yearns for.

Every time Obama and McCain get together to debate, the contrasts will be vivid. Initially, and most strikingly, there is the age difference. At 46 and 71, Obama and McCain will offer the largest age gap between presidential candidates in American history. While Obama represents the future, McCain is a picture of the past and a promised continuation of the Bush status quo.

Voters should be clear about one thing. McCain is not nearly the moderate his supporters claim him to be. Actually, quite the opposite is true. He's against abortion rights and reasonable gun control. He also believes that students should be taught the religious-based "intelligent design" theory of creation alongside the science-based theory of evolution. And according to an analysis of his voting record from the Web site www.voteview.com, Sen. McCain is ranked as the Senate's eighth most conservative member. These positions and votes by McCain are hardly descriptive of a moderate.

How about McCain the straight talker? Forget about it. He was against Bush's tax cuts for the rich (he actually said in 2001 that the tax cuts offended his "conscience" because "so many of them go to the most fortunate") before he was for them; he called religious extremists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance" before he more recently sought their support that he needed to win the nomination; and he tells us he's against the use of torture, but said nothing when President Bush appended his signing statement to McCain's anti-torture bill, in effect saying he was free to disregard the law.

Above all, though, McCain should not win the presidency because his election would mean an indefinite continuation of the Iraq occupation and an endorsement of the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive war. McCain not only thinks the war was a good idea and justified, he wants to send additional troops to Iraq -- troops to continue an occupation that, according to a recent McCain quote, might be "necessary" for the next 100 years.

Senator McCain is making the case that his experience, military background and view on the correctness of the Iraq war (and pre-emptive war in general) make him most qualified to be president. But how can all that be a sufficient or suitable qualification when as a result of that "experience" an unjustified war was begun, based on fabricated and exaggerated evidence, that has resulted in the deaths of almost 4,000 Americans and 1,000,000 Iraqis. This miserable war has cost our treasury trillions of dollars better spent at home, harmed and overextended our military, and severely diminished our standing in the world, all while attracting and motivating more prospective terrorists from across the Middle East. The "experience" label didn't work for Hillary, and it won't for McCain.

Barack Obama may lose the election this fall and fail to be the first African-American president. He may lose it because the country still has some racists who won't vote for a black man. And he may lose because a majority of voters might be suckered into believing the silly notion that only a military man can protect us in this time of peril. But my hope and what I will look forward to this Nov. 4 Election Day is a result where the American people have said enough with the failed and harmful polices of the Bush era. It's time for change -- it's time for Barack Obama.